The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying mechanism of the community climate on knowledge-sharing intention in virtual communities. Based on social cognitive theory, a theoretical model was developed and empirically tested using a web-based survey of 525 members from an online question and answer (Q&A) community in China. Results showed that knowledge-sharing self-efficacy and outcome expectation played a chain mediation role in the relationship between the community climate and knowledge-sharing intention. This study is among the first to examine whether and how community climate influences knowledge sharing. Our research findings unpack the mechanism of the community climate on knowledge-sharing intention, and provide practical insights on how to use community climate to facilitate users to share knowledge in online Q&A communities.

Previous research on the factors affecting knowledge sharing has focused on the relationships between a limited number of variables. However, it is unclear how these factors interact with each other and jointly influence knowledge-sharing intentions. Drawing on social cognitive theory (SCT), this paper performs a decision tree analysis to predict the knowledge-sharing intentions of social question-and-answer (Q&A) community members based on a multitude of environmental and individual factors, including a sharing culture, motivations, and individual characteristics. Data from 1,007 users were collected, and a regression tree model was built using the R package rpart. The results show that high levels of knowledge-sharing intentions occur among those who strongly enjoyed sharing and who perceived fairness within the community. For those who had a moderate or low level of enjoyment, their willingness to share knowledge was jointly affected by the sharing culture and extrinsic motivations.